The Acacia Strain have released their raucous new album ‘Slow Decay’ via Rise Records last week on the 24th July 2020
‘Slow Decay’ is not for the faint-hearted, documenting humanities slow descent into madness through a raw and scabrous array of guttural growls, screams and thunderous death metal drums.
All 12 tracks bleed with searing intensity in an ode to unknown darknesses that exacerbate both madness and hell on earth.
‘Feed a Pigeon, breed a Rat’ releases the album in a battering ram of noise which explodes through the speakers with the scream ‘It feels like hell’.
Squashing the quiet beyond redemption, The Acacia Strain smash through the gates of hell themselves to drench the album in raw and fully concentrated flames.
Not one breath is held back from here on, using tracks like ‘Seeing God’ and ‘Chhinnamasta’ to send a boulder of screaming sound and electricity from the drums and guitar to your speakers.
One track especially notable is ‘Solace and Serenity’ and ‘The Lucid Dream’ (feat. Jess Nyx) which literally knocked me off my seat.
As the ending fades and track finishes, one single whisper ‘I am a lucid dream’ is uttered right into your ear.
Obviously when wearing headphones and expecting the usual growling vocals, it ended up with me on the floor trying to reassure myself it was the track and not a demon!
‘Slow Decay’ has a clever way of doing this however, augmenting the reality around you; becoming lost in the tracks and beginning to question even your own judgement.
Vocalist Vincent Bennett said: “The whole concept is reality breaking down around us. We’ve done our time on earth, broken through the boundaries of what reality actually is, and we’re now witnessing our collective descent into madness.
“The things happening around us could be out of a comic book or a movie. The idea is, ‘This can’t be real.’ Maybe something happened. Maybe we’re all dead and we don’t even know it. Maybe we’re just living in some augmented reality hellscape of actual planet earth.”
The final track, ‘EARTH WILL BECOME DEATH’ is your last shining beacon of reality as the album progresses to the completely inhuman drawn out growls and yells.
The album crushes every track of doom and disaster to challenge reality with death metal emotion and apocalyptic power. The Acacia Strain bring the album to reality weaving and shattering expectations to immerse any listeners in the alternate universe of fear and hell.
Check the album out here!